That climb up to the August afternoon

This would be the first time we took our pet rabbit to bunny_hugger's parents. They were used to our lost rabbit; the new ... well, he's got different needs. He's very trustworthy with cables, displaying an unnerving ability not to chew them. His litter habits are much worse, though. And her parents have pets, now: a basset hound and a formerly-feral kitten that they've taken in. The cat is probably no threat to our rabbit, not least because she's the smallest adult cat imaginable; somehow she's half her own size. The dog is probably too timid to bother our rabbit, except he's a weird one (I'm not sure bunny_hugger's parents can get a non-weird dog) and you know what basset hounds were bred to do. Or you do now that I've told you you know what they were bred to do.

Anyway, they set our rabbit up in a closed room, with a pen and the fleece we used last year. He would be mopey and depressed the first couple days and then start coming out of his shell, which tracks uncannily well how our lost rabbit reacted to being left with bunny_hugger's parents. The dog never got more than a glimpse at him and scurried away from that. The cat, I don't know, because the cat spends all her time hiding when I'm in the house.

Our flight was as well-behaved as we could expect, although we only found a seat together --- we flew Southwest, which doesn't do seat assignments --- because I spotted what looked like a possibly-empty pair of seats in the last row. Love Field seemed nice enough, and we didn't have trouble picking up our rental car. We did have trouble finding somewhere to eat; the highway, access road, and office ramp complex of Dallas turns out to be beyond my poor ability to understand. Or at least to understand the first day. We made one attempt at going to a Wattaburger, since it was evening and we needed something and what's the point of going to a new city if you don't try out the fast-food places that aren't near you? And yes, two people who try to eat vegetarian tried to get something at Wattaburger; we had no reason to suppose they wouldn't have something. They didn't see things our way.

So that's why we were eating at a Subway in what sure looked like a corporate park that shouldn't have had a Subway in it. We got a spot of good news: ADM was getting in earlier than we expected and the person he was rooming with was getting in so late there was no sense waiting for him. So we would be able to get to our hotel room and set up and get to bed at an earlier hour.

The bad news: he was arriving, like most normal people, at Dallas/Fort Worth airport. Which was only bad because apparently you're charged a parking fee even if you just drive through the airport grounds, as we did on our first attempt to pick him up, or if you just drive up to the arrivals gate and pick up someone. We're content to pay for parking, but for just standing? Or, as on our first loop, literally never stopping the car? The heck, Dallas/Fort Worth? The heck?

We professed not to care which of the two rooms he'd reserved we got, which was a minor mistake. We got a room on the fourth floor, and ADM on the fifth. The hotel, a new-looking one, is made of that strange sound-transmitting noise that made it sound like packs of kid elephants were running laps most of the night. This didn't bother me; packs of kid elephants running in our room wouldn't bother me. It did hurt bunny_hugger's sleep. Apparently it was noisy upstairs too, but there'd be fewer (maybe no?) floors above the fifth to offer a racket.

And then the really bad news: one more of the invited sixteen women had dropped out. bunny_hugger would not be facing the number-one seed whom she'd been promised was someone beatable. She'd be facing the number-two seed, the person CST and everyone else who knew something of that upper echelon of competitive pinball players said was the real toughest competitor.

Well then.

Trivia: The Manhattan-side groundbreaking for the Holland Tunnel was the 31st of March, 1922. The New Jersey side groundbreaking was not until the 31st of May, and according to newspaper accounts, ``clandestinely'', as a private affair. Photographs of the groundbreaking appeared in the following week's Engineering News-Record anyway.
Source: Engineers of Dreams: Great Bridge Builders and the Spanning of America, Henry Petroski. (The point seems to have been that by getting some dirt broken that halting the project would be made harder.)